BOOK TENTH
��217
��Of ugly serpents ! Horror on them fell, And horrid sympathy; for what they saw They felt themselves now changing. Down
their arms, 541
Down fell both spear and shield; dosvii
they as fast,
And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form Catched by contagion, like in punishment As in their crime. Thus was the applause
they meant
Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame Cast on themselves from their own mouths.
There stood A grove hard by, sprung up with this their
change,
His will who reigns above, to aggravate Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like
that 550
Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve Used by the Tempter. On that prospect
strange
Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining For one x ? orbidden tree a multitude Now risen, to work them furder woe or
shame; Yet, parched with scalding thirst and
hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not ab- stain, But on they rowled in heaps, and, up the
trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks That curled Megsera. Greedily they plucked The fruitage fair to sight, like that which
grew 561
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom
flamed ; This, more delusive, not the touch, but
taste
Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended
taste With spattering noise rejected. Oft they
assayed, Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged
as oft,
With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws With soot and cinders filled ; so oft they
fell 570
Into the same illusion, not as Man Whom they triumphed' once lapsed. Thus
were they plagued, And, worn with famine, long and ceaseless
hiss,
��Till their lost shape, permitted, they re- sumed
Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo This annual humbling certain numbered
days,
To dash their pride, and joy for Man se- duced.
However, some tradition they dispersed Among the Heathen of their purchase got, And fabled how the Serpent, whom they called 580
Ophion, with Eurynome (the wide- Eiicroachiug Eve perhaps), had first the rule Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven And Ops, ere yet Dictsean Jove was born. Meanwhile in Paradise the Hellish pair Too soon arrived Sin, there in power be- fore
Once actual, now in body, and to dwell Habitual habitant; behind her Death, Close following pace for pace, not mounted
yet
On his pale horse; to whom Sin thus be- gan: 59 o " Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering
Death ! What think'st thou of our empire now ?
though earned
With travail difficult, not better far Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have
sat watch,
Unnamed, uudreaded, and thyself half- starved ? "
Whom thus the Sin-born Monster an- swered soon :
" To me, who with eternal famine pine, Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven There best where most with ravin I may
meet:
Which here, though plenteous, all too little
seems 600
To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound
corpse."
To whom the incestuous Mother thus re- plied : " Thou, therefore, on these herbs, and
fruits, and flowers, Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and
fowl
Xo homely morsels ; and whatever thing The scythe of Time mows down devour
unspared ;
Till I, in Man residing through the race, His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect,
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